At present, information such as short message service messages, e-mails, and instant messaging records is generally displayed on a terminal in a form of a list. Each piece of information in the list generally includes contact information of a communication peer end and communication content and communication time of the last communication with the communication peer end.
For example, instant messaging records are displayed in a form of a list. After a user communicates with a friend ‘Huahua’ for the first time by using an instant messaging tool, a terminal adds, to the list, a new communication record corresponding to ‘Huahua’.
In the process of implementing the present disclosure, the inventor finds that the existing technology has at least the following problems: When a user needs to search a list for a record of communication with a friend, the user needs to continuously slide the list, to find required information after sliding multiple times, thereby having a low information search efficiency. Particularly, as the number of friends communicating with the user increases, the list gets increasingly long, and accordingly the information search efficiency becomes lower. In addition, because the user needs to continuously slide the list on a terminal, the service life of the touch screen and battery of the terminal is shortened imperceptibly.